Personal weblog of Ted Pavlic. Includes lots of MATLAB and LaTeX (computer typesetting) tips along with commentary on all things engineering and some things not. An endless effort to keep it on the simplex.

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Monday, June 20, 2011

Spec# is a terrible name. C-clef would have been better.

Microsoft Research's RiSE has another pre-print out on Spec#. The Spec# specification language is old news by now, and so it's unfortunate that the name "Spec#" has not been changed because it means it probably is going to stick. Unlike the name "C#", "Spec#" is terribly unimaginative. It's like naming your first child "Hermione" and then naming your second child "Two".

Wouldn't it have made more sense to continue the musical analogy? For example, a C-clef is a conventional symbol from music theory that is used to specify the desired meaning of the lines that follow. Thus, it makes a lot of sense to use it as a name for specification language for C#, right?